no cliches about cookies crumbling, please
The disengagement of selves is a disorientating process; reassessment of one's romantic ideals, perhaps more so. Now the sense of divestiture, wall-stripping, tabula rasa - except the slate hasn't just been wiped clean, but suffered transformation into a shape upon which old words and old ideals do not fit quite so well. I can't be the only one who shoeboxes the past. It's something to stumble upon in a closet, years later, when one is looking for one's errant giggling children on a hide-and-seek Sunday afternoon; something to pick up (all thoughts of hiding and seeking forgotten), the past resurfacing in bittersweet tenderness as the box spills over with photographs, journal entries, random gifts, cards, ticket stubs, and the faint, heady scent of ill-fated love.